I thought about it long and hard

I decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’m sad, but I think I’ll make it through somehow, even if it means I miss out on the privilege of attempting to type 2000 words a day of what most likely would turn out to be nonsense. Last year, I discovered the NaNoWriMo underworld a mere two weeks before the starting date (Nov. 1), and so, for lack of preparation managed to power my way through 50,000 words with a concept that was originally intended for a short story. Nearly seven months passed before I could bear to look at that mess of 50,186 words again.

However, reading back over my submission from last year, I actually found some passages that I sort of liked, but most of it was couched in irritatingly long (and poorly written) character descriptions, monologues that killed thousands of words apiece and were delivered by minor, uninteresting characters, plus asides from the author that tended toward things like [Holy crap! Was that really only 50 words? I guess we’d better step it up a notch…]. In the last few days, in my desperation, I figured out that contractions counted as only one word, and therefore went back and edited all my “won’t”s to “will not”s, and so on, while also padding my punctuation , thusly . Near cheating, yes, but I say it still counts.

This year was , of course , supposed to be better . I would start planning sometime in January , begin stockpiling notes and outlines throughout the year so that , come November , I would have a whole arsenal of material . Famously, I put it off . And off . And by August had only the vaguest of ideas , which I spent roughly six hours ( on an airplane ) fleshing out and then promptly dropped . By October 1 , things were not looking good . I flirted with the idea of entering anyway, but then thought better of it , given the fact that I am actually quite busy these days ( as opposed to last year, when I was only mildly busy ) .

So. No NaNoWriMo for me. Last year’s winning season lives on in my memory, glorious as ever, and I dare not try and top it–so here I raise my fist in the air and cheer once, good and loud, for all the brave souls who are gearing up for the Mad Month. Ra!